Bad news though, is that I can’t seem to get motivated. It’s hard to exercise when it’s raining EVERY single day. It’s tough to wanna get out and do something when again, it’s raining EVERY single day.

I feel so blah when I don’t eat great or when I’m not active. I feel like a blob. Or a slug. I’m so over this rainy weather and I hope it goes away soon so I can go back to enjoying my turkey mountain hikes and my bike riding along the river.

Some good new for you though is that work is going really great for me. My boss loves me and other people notice it too and have called me “her favorite” which is true. Cause I’m just so awesome at my job. Haha. I mean, it’s true, so I’m gonna own it. I’m getting to try new things such as joining committees we have at work and also doing some new hire training as well as mentoring my fellow coworkers. I think exciting things are coming my way! Stay tuned.

Anyways, back to the healthy eating. As I said last time, I took a quick trip to Dallas to celebrate my nephews 2nd birthday and of course I made a Trader Joes run. I stocked up with some of my favorites like their vegetable fried rice, honey pretzel sticks, chocolate jumbles, pub cheese, and macaroni and cheese. I also got lots of new products to try.

So far, my favorite new product is their frozen meatless sausage patties. They can be heated up in microwave for a super quick breakfast side.

Another great new product is their freeze dried mango. Yum. I truly love mango so much.

Another new product is their peanut butter and jelly Greek yogurt. I loved this. It really did taste just like peanut butter and jelly. Wish I would’ve got more!

A couple other products I bought, tried, and liked were their chicken hotdogs, their frozen chile relleno dinner, and their frozen silver dollar pancakes.

I’ve still got lots more to try, but I haven’t been cooking as much lately. Unfortunately (for my stomach and my wallet) I’ve been eating out more often for dinner. I’m trying really hard to work on that this week though.

I have 2 goals for myself this week. Monday-Friday, I’m trying to not eat out. This really pertains to dinner, just because I NEVER eat out for breakfast, lunch, or snacks. My second goal is to eat vegetarian Monday-Friday for every meal.

I’ll pick 2-3 of the above and mix and match them to give my breakfast variety throughout the week.

Lunch-undecided right now but I’m thinking tomato, basil, and mozzarella sandwiches on ciabatta bread

Dinner-meatless Orange chicken over vegetable fried rice or cheese and veggie quesadillas with guacamole and salsa

Snack-V8, Quest bars, chex mix, pretzels and dip, dried fruit

Speaking of quest bars, I’ve found 2 more flavors I’m obsessed with. I love the banana nut muffin and the chocolate chip cookie dough. Seriously, the 2 best flavors so far!

No picture of the chocolate chip cookie dough. It never stood a chance. I devoured it before a picture ever crossed my mind.

Before I go, I just wanted to talk a bit about how I’ve been feeling since cutting out so much meat from my diet. On days where I truly haven’t been eating any meat, I’ve felt better. I don’t feel heavy or weighed down and my stomach has stopped hurting. The whole reason I started this change was due to the fact that I kept getting upset tummies every day around the same time in the afternoon. Gladly, I can say those have stopped.

Also, I feel like I spend less money on groceries weekly due to not buying meat or deli lunch meat. I used to spend like $9 on a pound of sliced deli meat for sandwiches. Beans and cheese are so much cheaper!

I have to say, I’m happy with the changes I’m making, and I seriously do hope that one day soon, I can call myself a vegetarian.

I’ll leave you with a couple of cuties! First is Ethan at his birthday party. Second is my doggy, Pudgy. They’re both the absolute best!

Today is Mother’s Day! And luckily, I got to share the day with my mom. I always cherish the times I get to enjoy hanging out with my momma one on one. She’s so much fun to be around, she’s always positive, and she always has a warm smile on her face.

I know, I know, everyone always thinks THEIR mom is the best mom, just like everyone always thinks THEIR dog is the cutest dog. But, she really is the best. And my dog is the cutest.

So for Mother’s Day, I took my mom and stepdad out for brunch and mimosas at Palace Cafe. It’s a cute little restaurant on Cherry Street here in Tulsa that I really enjoy going to.

For brunch, I had the crab cakes Benedict, my mom had the biscuit of the day which was a biscuit topped with steak, poached eggs, and hallandaise sauce, and my stepdad had the salmon BLT with an Asian twist to it.

I didn’t get a picture of the salmon, but it looked great!

My gift to my mom was really brunch and spending time together, but I also got her a couple of small gifts.

I got her a box of 5 nice chocolates from my favorite local chocolate store here in town. I also got her a pair of socks. Yep. Socks. I never claimed to be the best gift giver. But my motto is, I buy what I like. I learned that from my sister. Anyways, they’re inspirational socks with sayings such as “I am confident” or “I am amazing” or “I am a great friend” or “I love you” which is the quote on the pair I got my mom.

After brunch, our plan was to go ride bikes on Riverside. It was supposed to rain, but thankfully it held off all day, so we did indeed get to go ride bikes!

Bike riding with my mom was a blast! We rode all around the cute town of Jenks and also up and down Riverside.

Here’s a couple pics of us on the pedestrian bridge over the Arkansas river.

Notice how the picture my mom took is half sky and no bike? ….lol. She’s never claimed to be an expert photographer, but I love her anyways.

After our 5 and 1/2 mile bike ride, we decided to go get coffee and dessert at Starbucks. Since the weather today was absolutely amazing (warm, breezy, and overcast) we sat outside and enjoyed our coffees and smores tart.

Yum! We shared the 310 calorie tart for the perfect afternoon dessert.

Right next door to Starbucks is a health store called Complete Nutrition. I’d never been there before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, and to my surprise, they had Quest bars!

If you don’t know about Quest bars, you should! They have the best stats ever. Obviously the nutrition varies on each flavor, but the smores bar (my favorite so far) has 180 calories, 8 grams of fat, 23 grams of carbs, 1 gram of sugar, 20 grams of protein, and 13 grams of fiber. Seriously, the fiber part gets me! It’s the perfect snack.

So yeah, there are other “health” bars out there that taste better, but these taste really decent considering their nutritional value. We each bought 4 bars and 2 bags of the Quest brand chips.

If you know me at all, then you know my weakness is chips. They’re salty. They’re crunchy. They’re delicious. They’re not great for you. These Quest chips are a GREAT alternative to regular potato chips.

The chips have 120 calories per bag with 2 grams of fat, 5 grams of carbs, 1 gram of sugar, and 21 grams of protein. They have a protein taste, yes, but these could easily pass for baked chips served along side a sandwich or with a dip. I would buy them way more often if they weren’t so expensive. Yum! I think I’ll take a bag with me next weekend to Dallas for a car ride snack.

For someone who is trying to go vegetarian or at least eliminate a lot of meat from their diet, these chips (and bars!) are a great way to make sure you’re hitting your protein goal.

After leaving the health store, I brought my momma home and headed to my own home to enjoy the evening with MY child, my doggy, Pudge.

She watched me eat dinner, listened to some Nicki Minaj songs with me, got some yummy treats (I assume they’re yummy, though I’ve never tried them), and we enjoyed a long walk outside in between the rain/thunderstorms.

Today was a perfect day! I love weekends. I love spending time with my mom. I love combing the two.

Hope all of you enjoyed your weekend!

I’m planning to do a “What I ate _______day” post this week, maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, whatever day I feel like it really.

Until next time!

No funny meme today, but I’ll leave you with an inspirational quote. Couldn’t be more appropriate for my future Mexican vacation.

The healthy eating is getting a bit easier, but I’ve still got a weakness to go out and buy 4 cookies that I don’t need. And because of that, my weight is holding pretty steady at just under 300 pounds.

I was able to go to jazzercise twice last week, and probably twice this week also. I know….I could have definitely gone 4 times this week since I get off work so much earlier now, but yesterday I went and baked cookies with my grandma after work and Wednesday is MY BIRTHDAY so I deserve a couple days off from exercise. I DID go today, so that’s all that matters. 🙂

Anyways, I’ve got a super simple “recipe” to share with you that I made for dinner last night. It’s so simple that I wouldn’t call it a recipe. It’s more like a “put these things together” and you’ll have a great meal, recipe.

Calories=600 (Which might seem high but it works for me to keep me feeling full after dinner)

Instructions:

Mix the shrimp with the garlic, chili powder, and Mexican spice mix. Sauté in a sauce pan until shrimp is done.

While shrimp is cooking, heat up the refried beans in the microwave. When beans are warm, spread the beans evenly onto the two tostadas. Next, spread the guacamole over the beans. Top each tostada with half of the shrimp.

Load the tostada with lots of shredded romaine lettuce and diced tomato.

Mix the olive oil, vinegar, and lime juice to make a vinaigrette. Pour over the tostada. Top with crumbled queso fresco. Eat and repeat until all the tostadas are gone.

The vinaigrette is optional, but I just really love a sauce any way I can get it. I used this new vinegar and olive oil my sister bought me for my birthday.

The Serrano honey infused vinegar was perfect to make this vinaigrette but any vinegar would work!

I have noticed that I tend to use a lot of Mexican flavors when I cook. Luckily, I have found out how to make Mexican food healthy instead of making Mexican food the way I used to it eat…..covered and smother in cheese.

I made a great Taco Twist Soup this week that I’ll have to share with you all next!

P.S. The shrimp tostadas are great to eat while watching The Biggest Loser. I’m so excited for this new season of the show! I remember watching TBL back in January when I first started my journey. Watching the show really helped motivate me. I’m hoping this season does the same so I can get back on the right track 100%!

Ah, makeover week! The week every contestant REEEEALLLY wants to make it to. I mean seriously, who doesn’t love a good makeover?

They’ve been on the ranch now for 10 weeks, plus 2 weeks at home. The contestants have lost a lot of weight. The girl around my age, Dani, has lost about 84 pounds. One of the big guys has lost 120 pounds. That’s crazy!

Tomorrow will be 11 weeks into my journey, and I’m at just a little over 45 pounds lost at home. That’s with very minimal exercise compared to what they do on TBL. I can’t wait to get down closer to my goal weight so that I can give myself a makeover.

After losing all the weight and becoming a new person, the makeover symbolizes changing the outside to fit what the inside feels. You really do become a new person after tremendous weight loss. You become more confident, you become happier, you have more energy, you become full of life. I’ve seen all of that first hand with my mom who lost a lot of weight. She too became just a more confident, better, and amazing person. Not that she wasn’t great before, cause she was, but now others could see it too. 🙂

My goal throughout my journey is to become a better person on the inside and out. I want to be a confident woman. I want to exude happiness. I want to have goals, lots of them, and reach those goals. I want to live life to the fullest. Notice how it’s all about me? Because for once, I need to be selfish. I’m going to focus on me right now. And then eventually, after I’ve accomplished all of that, I’ll need an outside to match. When I get down to my goal weight, I’m going to get a makeover just like the contestants did on the show. It gives me that “something” to look forward to. 🙂

As I was watching The Biggest Loser, I started thinking about how far they’ve come on the show and how far I’ve come in MY weight loss journey. At this point, after exactly 2 months, eating healthy has become a habit. It’s so much easier than it was when I first started. It’s like second nature to me. It’s routine.

I’ve always heard it takes 21 days to make a habit. So for example, if you tell yourself you’re going to wash your hands everyday at 8pm then it takes 21 days of washing your hands at that time to form a habit that will stick. Being two months into this, I’ve realized how many new great habits I’ve started.

I eat cereal every morning for breakfast. Sometimes in the past I’d be too busy to eat breakfast some mornings. So now I’m not only making a habit to eat breakfast, but I’m also eating a healthy breakfast.

Another habit is that I don’t drink any pop that’s not diet. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to quit pop for many years. I couldn’t get past 2 days without it because I would get horrible headaches. Now, I don’t even miss “real pop” as I call it. I’ve replaced the pop drinking with either diet pop or water. That’s pretty much all I drink now at home.

The habit I’m most proud of is cooking dinner at home almost every night. I’ve actually started to enjoy cooking again. If you recall from earlier posts, I hardly ever cooked because I was eating fast food or take out pretty much every meal. Now I look forward to meal planning for the week and deciding what I’ll have for dinners this week, which leads me to my next habit.

I am in the habit of planning now. I plan out my meals, my snacks, my time, my exercise, etc. I like knowing what I’m going to eat for dinner before it’s even dinner time so that I don’t get lazy and stop to get something unhealthy on the way home. I like planning out when I’ll exercise so that I’ll actually do it. I like planning out my time and what I’ll be doing so that I can therefore plan my meals or snacks around that too.

For example, Sunday night was Church at 6pm. After that was Bible study. Eating at 5:30 was too early, but waiting until after Bible study at 11:00 was too late too. So I planned it out and brought my dinner with me. After Church, one person usually goes and grabs some Arby’s or something close by for everyone. I wasn’t even tempted to eat with them because I had my delicious dinner packed with me ready to eat. 🙂

These habits that I’ve created are really important to me and I don’t want to break them. I want to continue to create better habits for myself. I want to continue to move forward, to be better. And just like they try to teach the contestants on TBL, I’m worth it. I want to live. There’s an alive person under all this weight just trying to get out. 🙂

So I finally went out and bought a scale, because I don’t have another dr visit scheduled for a while which is where I normally weigh in, so I can now weigh myself at home! I purposely got up this morning and didn’t eat or drink anything until after I bought a scale and came home and weighed in.

The last time I weighed myself, which was January 30th, I weighed in at my moms house on a Wednesday EVENING. I had only lost 3.4 pounds in 2 weeks. I thought that number seemed low, so I wanted to weigh myself in the MORNING which is when all my other weigh-ins were taken.

My new weight as of today, February 2nd, is 341.9. That’s a total of 30 pounds lost in 6 and 1/2 weeks! This number gives me new motivation to keep going on this journey. This is officially the most weight I’ve ever lost while attempting to lose weight. It’s also the longest I’ve ever stuck to a healthy eating diet plan. 🙂

Today while out buying my scale, I also bought a small 2-quart crock pot. I figured I could use it to give a little variety to my meals, maybe make some soups or shredded chicken or even some roast. If anyone has any healthy crock pot recipes I’ll take them!

Tomorrow should be another great day like today. It’s super bowl Sunday, which I don’t really care about (haha) but I am going to a super bowl party. I’ve gotta find a good healthy recipe of something I can make tomorrow and bring so that I’ll have at least one healthy food option there. I’m also meeting a couple friends from work at Jamba Juice for smoothies and gossip. I’ll let you know how it all goes! 🙂

This week has been a great week so far! On Tuesday nights for the next 7 weeks, I’m doing a bible study with my friend Kara and a lady from her church named Carol. Basically Carol is teaching me the outline and basics of the bible. Each week we’ll talk about something new. The goal from this is to become more comfortable with the bible and feel more confident about being able to talk about it and I’ll hopefully learn a lot of new things that I don’t know. Also, I have not been saved and it’s something I want to do soon so that’s an end goal as well.

I wasn’t really raised in church, but both of my parents were. So I have good morals and I know right from wrong, but I feel like this God part of my life is missing and I’d like to have it. So along with my weight loss journey I’d like to make a spiritual journey as well. 🙂

I have this super cute notebook that my mom bought for me in London that I’ve been saving to use for something special, and I’ve decided to use it for my bible study. Here’s a pic of the notebook.

It’s soooo me, I think that’s why I love it so much. Hearts=Love and I love Love and it’s colorful, and I love color. 🙂

This week has also been great because I worked out again tonight! Tonight’s workout was this:

I really enjoyed this workout actually better than the 52 card workout. With the 52 card workout, it was a lot of standing up, getting back down on the ground, back and forth which made my lower back hurt a little. I injured my back playing softball years ago and it’s flared up here recently. So this workout tonight didn’t hurt my back as much, and I definitely still felt the burn during the exercises.

This week has also been great because I weighed myself tonight and I weighed 347.6. That’s another 3.4 pounds in 2 weeks, for a total weight loss so far of 24.4 pounds. Woohoo! I can officially go buy a scale (because I don’t have one) that goes to 350. Before, I couldn’t use a 350 pound scale, so this makes me super happy. 🙂